France finds no links to terrorism in EgyptAir crash

France announced a manslaughter inquiry on Monday into the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in May, killing all 66 people on board.

The prosecutor’s office in Paris said it did not find any links to terrorism and added that the inquiry is an accident investigation.

Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said investigators do not believe the plane crash was deliberate.

She did not divulge any more details about the plane’s disappearance.

Investigators in mid-June discovered one of the flight recorders from the crashed plane after searching for weeks.

Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister, Sherif Fathy, said that the box had been destroyed, but that its data storage unit was recovered and sent to investigators.

Egyptian investigators said earlier that "several main locations of the wreckage" had been discovered, following nearly a month-long search operation in the Mediterranean Sea close to Greece.

The Airbus A320 plane set off as EgyptAir flight 804 from Paris to Cairo on 19 May, but disappeared from Egyptian and Greek radar screens apparently without sending any distress call.

Suspicions initially fell on militant groups, especially the Islamic State (IS) group, which has threatened both France and Egypt, but no one has claimed responsibility.